Youth Pastor question
A few years ago I was leading a late night forum with Mike King, and Jim Hancock. I believe we were in Atlanta and there was about 100 youth workers in the room We were talking about the future of youth ministry.
During the conversation one youth pastor broke down and began to weep about his struggles and stress as a youth pastor. Another shared a personal story about past drug use and his desire to use less profanity. It was a rich conversation.
Mike mentioned that the Youth Pastor of the church he attends in KC doesn't lead programs.
Hands shot up everywhere in the room. There was suddenly a burning question in the room and people needed to know the answer to it. One young guy stood up and asked the question on the minds of many, "If your youth pastor doesn't lead programs... what does he do?"
There it was... floating out there...
But before Mike could respond, I made an observation.
with 100 youth workers in the room hoping for a new future in youth ministry, most seemed unable to understand a world in which they didn't lead programs.
This is a big problem for us all. chances are you weren't called to be a program director. chances are, when you said "yes" to God's calling to vocational ministry, your heart wasn't leaping for the opportunity to shop for industrial sized can's of chocolate pudding, writing bulletin announcements and sustaining a great program week in and week out. While feeling the pressure to outdo the week before.
Were you called to that?
This isn't an attack on programs, there have been enough of those in recent memory. (Maybe there's a way to keep your programs, and you not have to plan them.) Also, I'm not talking about working yourself out of a job... that's simply nonsense.
If you didn't have to lead programs or administrate a youth program, would you still have something to do? Anything of substance?
Forget about whether or not your church would by it, can you think outside of your current reality.
During the conversation one youth pastor broke down and began to weep about his struggles and stress as a youth pastor. Another shared a personal story about past drug use and his desire to use less profanity. It was a rich conversation.
Mike mentioned that the Youth Pastor of the church he attends in KC doesn't lead programs.
Hands shot up everywhere in the room. There was suddenly a burning question in the room and people needed to know the answer to it. One young guy stood up and asked the question on the minds of many, "If your youth pastor doesn't lead programs... what does he do?"
There it was... floating out there...
But before Mike could respond, I made an observation.
with 100 youth workers in the room hoping for a new future in youth ministry, most seemed unable to understand a world in which they didn't lead programs.
This is a big problem for us all. chances are you weren't called to be a program director. chances are, when you said "yes" to God's calling to vocational ministry, your heart wasn't leaping for the opportunity to shop for industrial sized can's of chocolate pudding, writing bulletin announcements and sustaining a great program week in and week out. While feeling the pressure to outdo the week before.
Were you called to that?
This isn't an attack on programs, there have been enough of those in recent memory. (Maybe there's a way to keep your programs, and you not have to plan them.) Also, I'm not talking about working yourself out of a job... that's simply nonsense.
If you didn't have to lead programs or administrate a youth program, would you still have something to do? Anything of substance?
Forget about whether or not your church would by it, can you think outside of your current reality.
Labels: youth ministry
posted by mark at
4:39 PM
1 Comments:
Wow, that's incredibly tough to think outside of the structure of programs. I definitely know that there would be stuff to do, and that the stuff I would be doing would be largely relational. A lot of guys I know talk about hating the word program and they talk about their ministries as if they don't run them, but when you drill them down, they are running programs, but calling them something else.
I'm curious as to how you would envision a youth ministry being run without programs.
I know right now my church would not go for a program-less ministry. As I type this stream-of-consciousness style I would see my program-less ministry consisting of me hanging out with students, sharing life with them, but mainly focusing on pouring my life into my leaders. Empowering them to do relational ministry. Equipping them with the tools that they needed to become influencers in youth culture.
When you talk about getting rid of programs, are you simply talking about getting rid of structured programs, or getting rid of programmed gatherings altogether.
Thanks for the post. It made me think, and I'd love to talk about it some more. JM
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